Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. If you can afford to, that is.

Congress returns Monday after a two-week spring break during which members faced constituent angst back home over high gas prices, and lawmakers are ready to make some noise of their own.

“It’s the single most subject that people talk about to me,” said Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican freshman from eastern Pennsylvania. “If every member went home and got beat up over gas prices as a group in Washington, we might have more serious talks about what to do.”

But there is scant evidence the timeworn ideas that House and Senate leaders are putting on the table will do anything other than score political points.

The GOP will continue its campaign to blame President Barack Obama and limited offshore drilling since the gulf spill, and Democrats will point to Big Oil’s high profits and market speculators and suggest tapping the nation’s oil reserve.

As of Sunday, a gallon of regular gasoline cost an average of $3.94, according to AAA. One month ago, it cost $3.62 per gallon.

“Nothing concentrates the mind like $4-a-gallon gasoline,” former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) told POLITICO. The problem is many pending ideas are “shop worn and tired.”

House Republicans have three bills to boost offshore oil and gas drilling ready to go as they advance the argument that more domestic production is a key method to lowering gas prices mainly set by the global price of crude oil.

“When I listen to my constituents about the challenges they face, skyrocketing cost of gasoline is at the top of the list,” Oklahoma Rep. James Lankford said in his introduction to Saturday’s GOP radio address, quickly noting that gas prices have nearly doubled since January 2009.

One bill expected on the floor Thursday requires the Obama administration to conduct offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia that have been delayed or canceled. A second bill likely on the floor this week gives the Interior Department 30 days to make a decision on Gulf of Mexico permits.

A third bill from House Natural Resources Committee Republicans — likely on the floor next week — forces the administration to move on a five-year-lease plan to advance a goal of producing 3 million barrels of oil domestically per day by 2027.

The White House and congressional Democrats say companies are not properly tapping into leases that are currently available and that party members have other ideas to reduce the pain at the pump.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, Sunday suggested tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “We’ve seen a supply disruption as a result of Libya, which has helped feed a speculative bubble,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It’s about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from Libya — but that has then fed the speculative bubble,” Van Hollen added. “If you want to pop that bubble, you have to take some action.”

On the speculation front, the Obama administration has launched the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group under the auspices of the Justice Department’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The group’s first meeting is Monday.

Democrats are also using the high prices to make their classic argument that major oil and gas companies make so much money that they don’t need federal assistance.

Obama has led the charge, calling on Congress to repeal $4 billion in oil and gas tax incentives and to divert that money to clean-energy projects. “When oil companies are making huge profits, and you’re struggling at the pump and we’re scouring the federal budget for spending we can afford to do without, these tax giveaways aren’t right,” Obama said in his Saturday radio address.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) last week unveiled the “pillars” of a plan to repeal incentives for the top five major oil and gas companies that uses the money to finance clean-energy projects and other means of lessening oil dependence.

While some details are evolving, it would eliminate a Section 199 domestic manufacturing deduction for those companies that is available for a variety of other industries. It would also reduce the tax credit for royalty payments to foreign governments and would impose an excise tax on certain Gulf of Mexico leases.

A Baucus aide said to expect a bill to be introduced soon, possibly this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised last week that the bill would come up on the Senate floor “as soon as I can do it procedurally.”

But Republicans and the oil industry have pushed back.

“We understand that it’s simply too irresistible for many politicians in times of high oil prices and high earnings — they feel they have to demonize our industry,” Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil’s vice president of public and government affairs, told reporters in announcing the company’s $10.7 billion in revenue in first quarter earnings.

“Unfortunately, they’re reaching for the political playbook rather than seeking real solutions,” Cohen added, referring to the Obama administration and Democrats. But he could have been talking about leaders from both parties.

“The more serious work has to be done well outside of the headlines,” Dorgan said.

That might mean in the committees. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee leaders often work across party lines. But there is no agreement yet on language, sought by Republicans, boosting oil and gas production as part of an evolving plan to shore up offshore drilling safety.

Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has acknowledged the continued need for oil and gas drilling while highlighting renewable fuels and vehicles powered by both electricity and natural gas as a longer-term strategy to relieve the pain of high gas prices.

A T. Boone Pickens-led idea to offer tax incentives for natural gas vehicles has earned the derision of some on the right but has also managed to draw an impressive collection of backers — from tea party supporters to ardent New England liberals.

Oil refiners could be another target. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said new refineries should be a priority. “We have refinery permit problems,” he said last week at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin. “We need to build some new refineries. We haven’t in a long time. We need to streamline the refinery permit process to allow refineries to expand and be built.”

The last time lawmakers came together and passed a bipartisan plan that arguably addressed gas prices was in 2007 with a bill ramping up federal fuel-efficiency standards, incentives for plug-in hybrids and federal help for more biofuel production.

The following summer, the price of regular gasoline hit $4.11 nationwide, a record high that, for the moment, still stands.

Gas price experts say that record could be broken this year but that prices shouldn’t reach the $5- or $6-per-gallon levels that some fear while others use as a scare tactic in the ongoing debate.

“We’re close” to reaching the peak price for the year, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst of Oil Price Information Service. “Certainly, six weeks from now, we’ll be looking at this in the rearview mirror,” Kloza said. “Six days from now, probably not.”